So how come when NASA tells us there are tiny invisible planets light years away we all applaud, but somehow when they point to the evidence of climate change right here right now it's all a big con?
And, conversely, many of the people who think climate change is a con are indifferent to extrasolar planets.
First of all, you're attempting to take down some strawman. _Who_ is applauding this discovery, and simultaneously calling NASA's climate change research "all a big con"? It's disingenuous when you just present a (IMHO) off-topic opinion that the majority of the other commenters here have, in the form of an innocent question. If you would like to discuss the view of a public figure or other commenter, that's fine. If you want to discuss how you think that people should accept NASA-related research as a whole or not at all, that's fine.
But don't ask a false question to take down a strawman.
Second, your statement "either you think NASA is good at science or you don't" is a massive trivialization. NASA is a 19 billion dollar organization, with over 17,000 employees (not counting contractors). Beyond the problems of the phrase "good at science" (What does it _mean_ to be "good at science"? That's an incredibly complex topic.), NASA is huge, with many, many different people and departments, opinions and beliefs, cultures, etc. Thinking of NASA as a fixed, singular, cohesive entity is a flawed assumption.
And I guess finally, to get back to your original question, it's quite straightforward. The (economic, political) implications of habitable planets 40 light years away is quite different from the (economic, political) implications of American industrial and economic activity needing to be massively changed, very quickly.
Don't get me wrong, I'm a firm believer that climate change is a human-caused phenomenon. But I don't feel that your original question was presented in the best possible way.
That's a false dichotomy.
Its quite possible to think (I am not endorsing this belief, only saying that it is not self-contradictory) that a large organization like NASA has people doing good and non-politicized science in certain areas in certain areas and bad and politicized science in others.
In fact, one could quite internally consistently believe that NASA does good, non-politicized science in some domains deliberately as a means of generating credibility so that people accept the bad, politicized science it does in other domains.